A simulation platform to study inter-BAN interference

A Body Area Network (BAN) is a radio standard for wireless connectivity of wearable and implantable sensor nodes that are located inside or in proximity to the human body. Many applications of BANs (e.g. physiological monitoring) require reliable communication of information between the sensor nodes and their controller. As there are currently no coordinating mechanisms among multiple co-located BANs, interference caused by co-channel transmission in adjacent BANs could impact the reliability and in general the quality of the service experienced by a receiver node within an individual BAN. So far, few studies have been done to study the impact of such inter-BAN interference. A comprehensive study would eventually require an extensive measurement campaign with networks that have been implemented according to the BAN standard. Until then, a simulation platform that can allow researchers to gain more information about the impact of interference would be a valuable research tool. In this paper, we present a research platform that has been developed to perform simple statistical evaluation of inter-BAN interference. Initial results for the ISM frequency band (i.e. 2.4 GHz) have been provided here.